Michael Troitsky

Holy Hieromartyr Michael Troitsky, a priest, was born on 6 November 1878 in the village of Pokrovskoe, Aleksin district of Tula province, to the priest Michael Troitsky. He graduated from the theological seminary and three courses of the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1913 he was ordained a priest for the church of his native village, then moved to the village of Troitskoe in the Podolsk district and, a little later, to the village of Valishchevo, to the Dormition church, whose building had begun in 1907 and which was consecrated in 1919.

He was arrested on 27 November 1937 and held at Serpukhov. Witnesses from among the local peasants said that the priest complained that Soviet power oppressed the clergy, demanded of them taxes beyond their strength, sought to destroy religion, and expressed counter-⁠revolutionary views. One said that at the beginning of November 1937 he handed the priest the self-⁠taxation demand, and that he had said, "See how Soviet power mocks us, you see yourself that we have nothing to pay with, and yet they still send them to us." On the day of the arrest the investigator asked him whether he admitted guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation; Father Michael answered that he did not. The same day the inquiry was ended, and the next day the bill of indictment was drawn up, according to which, "using religious rites, he carried on counter-⁠revolutionary agitation among the faithful, expressing views hostile to Soviet power."

On 1 December 1937 the judicial troika of the NKVD of the Moscow region sentenced him to ten years in a labour camp. He was taken first to Butyrka, then by transport to Lesozavodsk, where he arrived with a large party of prisoners on 5 February 1938. After three and a half months, in accordance with new directives of the Soviet government, a new case was begun against him and other clergy. In March 1938 a prisoner of column 145, in which there were many clergy exiled from Moscow, laid a denunciation against them. One priest, Archpriest Leonid Kharyuzov, was arrested and at the interrogation of 12 March confirmed the denunciation. In all thirty-⁠one people were arrested; four admitted guilt and slandered the others. The priest Michael Troitsky did not admit guilt. On 31 March 1938 the troika of the UNKVD of the Far Eastern region sentenced him to death. But it seems that even after this the priest was brought out to the general labour of the camp, like the others condemned in the same case. He was shot on 5 August 1938 and buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 23 July (5 August in the new style), the day of his death, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (a movable day) and with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, on 5 September (a movable day).